Travis Kolder

A friend of mine texted me Wednesday night. He was on Thanksgiving vacation, had met with an old friend and two of his buddies, he shared the Gospel, and his friend’s two buddies gave their life to Christ. Amazing! These are the kind of stories we live for.

But my buddy took the process two steps farther. First, he set up plans to baptize the two new believers and did so two days later. This alone is a huge step because many would have waited. It was something he’s seen done and he’s done himself. This was the easy part.

The second step was he sat down with these three guys (his friend and the two new converts) and instructed them for a couple of hours on how to follow Jesus. My friend shared with them simple steps that they can do over and over that will grow them up into mature disciples. My friend has helped these guys go from unbelievers to disciples of Jesus in a couple of days.

My point is this: It’s great to be able to share the Gospel with someone, but you also have to have a discipleship path for people that you can train them in quickly and they can do themselves.  Will these guys be the start of a church? It’s hard to say at this point. But they could be if they decide to walk out the path my friend set out of them.

How about you? If you were in my friend’s situation, could you not only lead them to Christ, but baptize them? And if you got that far, would you be able to sit down and explain to them how to grow into maturity? Could the new converts be the basis for a new church? If the answers to some of these questions are no, then you may be seeing why we see very few movements of people coming to Christ in our country.

What we need are empowered believers to share the Gospel. We need believers who can and do baptize others. We need simple, repeatable discipleship patterns that can exist without a curriculum but can change lives. And what we need, friends, is a church that is easily planted.

Photo Credit: Soybean Sprouts During Early Growth by United Soybean Board